Sebastian Maniscalco

When I was growing up, we dressed up for church.

Growing up in an Italian family, we used our body to convey a message.

People come to a show, then they go back to their neighborhood, and it has become like word-of-mouth. Everybody loves to turn somebody on to something. It kind of just snowballed.

I like Las Vegas because it kind of gives me a chance to gauge my material in front of a very diverse group of people. There are a lot of different people in the audience, and you can kind of get a barometer for how your material plays throughout the country.

The more comfortable I got onstage, the more comfortable I got expressing myself in a physical manner. And it almost shocked people - 'Oh, is there something happening?'

I don't like long jokes. I like stories rather than setup punchlines.

I'll never stop doing stand-up. There's nothing better than getting in front of 2,500 people and making an entire room laugh.

I remember when I was young, I was watching TV, and my father came into the room, agitated, and told me to start a business. I was eight years old.

Sometimes it's cool to have banter with the audience. Occasionally, somebody will say something, and I'll say something right back, and everybody laughs, and it's funny.

I developed a knack for storytelling early on around the kitchen table with my family. I just happen to be a funny guy.

I give a facial expression in a moment of silence for audiences to react to what I just said and kind of let that marinate with the audience for a little bit. I enjoy the physical part of the comedy as much as the verbal content. People tend to gravitate to not only what they're hearing but also what they're seeing.

It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.